Vegan Rice Recipes

I have a thing for Paella, which you no doubt gathered from that exclamation point in the header. And can you blame me? There’s something so, grrr, red blooded about Spanish food. And when it’s a Paella, a one-pot package deal with so many goodies tucked in, one just can’t help but fall in love. Okay, I’d…

Sanna Polo, a superhealthy Indian-style pancake packed with lentils, brown rice and veggies is a complete meal in itself. And if that sounds incredible to you, skip over and read the recipe. In Konkan along India’s west coast, where my dad’s family hails from, “polo” is local for dosa: a food most of you are no doubt familiar with….

All this summer, I’ve been into sprouts. So much so that every time I bring out a jar of beans and a cup measure, Desi rolls his eyes and says, “More? What about these?” He’s pointing at two colanders already sitting on the kitchen platform, containing sprouts in various stages of germination. To which I…

A popular one-pot meal that’s cooked in just about every Indian home is a khichdi or a khichari, and those are not the only names it goes by. It’s khichuri in Bengali, pongal in Tamil, khichri in Gujarat, and kedgeree in English (yeah, as in the language spoken by the Brits). Although the Brits, somewhere…

When Desi and I lived in Mumbai — or Bombay as those of us who left the city in those days still like to call it — there were nights, after wrapping up the graveyard shift at the newspaper we both worked for, when we would set out with co-workers and friends to scour the city’s streets for…

It’s almost Memorial Day guys, and I don’t know what you have planned for your cookout, but I have the perfect burger to slap on the grill and then sink my teeth into. My Black Bean and Black Rice Burger, aka Black Burger. Memorial Day is always a dramatic day around here in the nation’s capital. Friday,…

When you live with a dog, you soon start to see the world through his eyes. A dog’s world is rich– infinitely richer than our human one. We only appreciate the familiar and we are held back by our inhibitions and all those pesky little things like behaving ourselves in public. A dog, with no such irritants in the…

This one’s going to be a short post today because it’s 10 pm now and the only reason my tired eyes are open is because I can’t wait to share this recipe with you: my Black Rice Mushroom Risotto with Caramelized Onions. You know I am always looking for easy weeknight recipes to brown bag…

My Cauliflower Wild Rice Pilaf is a healthy and delicious one-pot meal that is quick enough to cook up for family on a weekday night and elegant enough to serve company. It also makes a great brown bag lunch. In Indian cooking, a pilaf or pulao is a rather spare rice dish seasoned with a…

Brown bag lunches can be a charged issue in our home. I want them to be healthy and tasty, he wants them to be … well… a certain way. Desi is one of those guys who will eat at his desk every single day. So, according to him, the food has to be such that…

My Pumpkin Brown Rice Pudding is a super-fun way to sneak “healthy” into your Thanksgiving dessert. But wait, let’s not start with healthy. Let’s start with delicious because that’s what this dish is– absolutely, mindblowingly delicious. So delicious in fact that you might have a hard time sharing it. And as for the healthy part–…

A biryani may be the ultimate indulgence, food-wise, but truth is that it can also be transformed into a super-healthy– and decadently delicious– weeknight dish. All you need to work that magic is your imagination. My Quinoa Biryani with Kala Chana has all the flavor of a traditional biryani because it has the same spices…

If you really could find your way to your lover’s heart through their stomach, what would you feed them on the most romantic of all days? Reader Samantha asked me for an Indian vegan menu that she and a friend could put together for their boyfriends on Valentine’s Day. So I put my thinking toque…

Here’s a kheer (an Indian pudding) that my Konkani parents make for Makar Sankranti, a celebration in their part of India that falls on the same day as Pongal. The recipe is very similar to Sakkarai Pongal, except that my parents’ version has some coconut milk, a staple of the Konkan region where coconut trees…